


Stir of Echoes

by ThisDominionIsMine



Series: The Age of Silence [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Crossover, Emotional Baggage, Exhibitionism, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Power Dynamics, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 07:58:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisDominionIsMine/pseuds/ThisDominionIsMine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One bombing, a crippled Courier, a dead dictator, two partially-incapacitated human armies, hundreds of armed robots, thousands of deaths, and four months later, the Mojave isn't any prettier to live in. The problem is that there aren't so many people capable of fixing it - not anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stir of Echoes

On the fuzzy edge of his dreams, Scott hears Isaac roll to his feet and yank his Shishkebab from its scabbard. His footsteps grit against the dirt, and he steps around the billboard they camped in the shadow of as Scott is opening his eyes.

Metal screeches against metal.

Scott kicks off him blanket and grabs for the shotgun by his pack, gets it loaded and braced against his shoulder just in time for Isaac to plow chest-first into the ground with blood matting his curls and his left arm twisted up behind his back, Allison Argent kneeling on top of him to finish prying the Shishkebab from his grip.

Argent hawks up a wad of blood and saliva and spits it off to the side, then looks up at Scott. “You two were hell and a half to track. Congrats.”

“Let him up.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” she says, and stands. “I’m not going to be so gentle if I have to track you halfway across the Mojave again.” She offers a hand to Isaac, but he ignores it, rolling onto his back and then heaving himself to his feet without using his arms for support. She smiles. “You know there’s an NCR bounty out for you, right? For your head, anyway.” She looks back at Scott. “You’re wanted alive. The ‘alive’ was underlined. Twice.”

“Since when does a caravan owner become a bounty hunter?” Scott asks. When Argent gives his shotgun a pointed glance, he slings it over his shoulder. “What happened to Ly- Martin?”

(It had been easier to reduce them all to surnames after so many friendly faces turned vicious. Hale. Whittemore. Argent. Martin. Stilinski – sometimes. Sometimes still Stiles, the boy who wanted to save the world and didn’t quite make it.)

“Lydia’s still alive,” Argent says. “And so is Stiles, contrary to popular belief. His father isn’t going to let him near the Mojave again soon, but he did survive that meeting with Peter Hale. Derek made sure of that.”

Isaac makes a show of impatience: widening his stance and scanning the desert like he’s waiting for someone.

In return, Argent makes a show of twirling a ring dagger around her finger. “The Legion is gone, the NCR is weak, and pretty old Uncle Peter is still sitting on the Strip with his army of robots, holding most of the cards. Caravans are getting taken down every day, in all quarters, by all parties.” She pauses, and her eyes flick around their camp. “Out of the lesser factions, the two most prevalent raiders are Fiends and Kahns. Fiends, as we all know, are disinclined to bargain about anything that doesn’t involve chems.”

“You want to turn the Kahns into caravan guards,” Scott guesses, and the flash of irritation in her expression is as good as confirmation. “They won’t do it. Their lives aren’t at stake anymore since Stiles got them in good with the NCR. They’d be bored out of their skulls.”

“I was hoping for a bit of diplomatic aid from some old… companions.”

“You stabbed me, just now,” Isaac says, casual, like there isn’t blood trickling down his thigh – blood that makes Scott curse and grab for a Stimpak when he sees it.

“Jesus, Isaa-”

“That wasn’t very diplomatic of you,” Isaac continues. He catches the Stimpak Scott throws at him, unhooks a strap of leather bound around his forearm, and jams the needle into the blue vein snaking under his skin. He keeps his eyes on Argent and a smile on his lips.

Argent’s expression doesn’t change. “You two were easier to track than Boyd and Erica. Tell me where they are or get me in contact with them, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Why?” Scott asks.

Her calm façade cracks further. “Because I’ll shoot you if you don’t. Because I’ve lost a lot of money and a lot of good men and women since the Boomers lit up the Fort and the NCR shredded itself trying to take on the Legion and Hale at the same time, and my options have been reduced to chasing traitors across the desert to save my caravan or spending the rest of my life sitting in some godforsaken watchtower, waiting for a bush to twitch so I can shoot it.” She plants her hands on her hips and glowers at Scott. “Any more flatfooted questions?”

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Erica asks, and cracks a brick against the side of Argent’s skull.

***

She wakes up in a dark, smoke-filled wooden building with a knotted cloth gag in her mouth, her hands tied behind her back, and Isaac the Fiend sitting cross-legged across the room, tending to something near the base of his blade. He glances up when she yanks her knees up to her chest and begins to rise. “I wouldn’t,” he says, and then watches without a discernible change in his expression when she almost dislocates her shoulders trying to stand – her wrists are bound to some kind of ring set into the wall an inch or so off the ground. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She snarls through her gag and starts to twist her wrists against their bonds.

The Fiend sighs and climbs to his feet, sliding the Shishkebab back into its sheath. Allison watches the jointed length of him unfold, experiencing a rushed revisitation of all the murder/rape/brutalization stories that have been catalogued of Fiends, and shoves herself back against the wall, twisting her knees to grope for the knife in her boot while he paces across the room.

“They made me take it off you already.” Leather creaks and metal rasps when he crouches down in front of her. She starts to bring a foot up to kick him before he sets his knee down atop her ankle, pinning it. “I did spend some time guarding you and your caravan, if you remember.”

Allison gargles through the sourness of the gag. Some hind corner of her mind wonders if he calls himself a Kahn now, why he isn’t quantifying himself as one of them, and if that makes a difference. The Isaac she last encountered was still more Fiend than human, and he wouldn’t have spoken more than a few biting cynicisms to her under these circumstances. And he certainly wouldn’t have cut that foul, crusty gag off of her and held a canteen for her to rinse her mouth out with and then drink from, watching the working of her throat to know when to tip it away.

Allison doesn’t bother to feel guilty about draining the canteen, and she stares right into his little-boy-blue eyes after and asks if he’s going to untie her hands, too.

He sits back on his heels. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Why not?”

“Because Erica said so.”

“So why did you just…” She jerks her chin at him. “You know what I mean.”

His face twitches like he’s confused. “Those gags taste bad.”

Allison blinks at him. “Was that a question?”

“No.” Isaac looks down and off to the side. His hands flex; the scars across them ripple in the light from the torches. “Dinner is soon. I’ll see if I can bring you some food.”

“That would be nice.” She smiles when he looks at her again. “Sorry for stabbing you.”

Isaac rocks to his feet and turns away from her. “It’s nothing,” he says, and walks out.

***

Allison is curled into a ball when Erica walks in. Her knees are tucked in against her chest, her forehead resting on top of them, but she startles into sitting upright when Erica kicks the door closed. “You,” she says.

“I’d apologize about the brick-to-head thing,” Erica says. “But we’re gonna get a pretty penny for you, so. You understand.” She kneels down next to Allison and lets her see the bowl she’s carrying. “Squirrel stew. Still hot.”

“You let Stiles repair your relationship with the NCR just to wreck it again – you know that, right?”

Erica shrugs. “NCR has the power they want from the Dam and the threat of the Legion subdued, so to them, the Mojave is Hale’s problem. That was the deal, and you know Hale doesn’t give a hot shit about caravans. From here to the Colorado, we own the land, just like Papa Kahn said.” She smiles, sickly sweet, and hefts the spoon. “Be glad that Martin’s willing to give up a lot for you to be intact, or it’d be rapists guarding you instead of us civilized folk.”

“Civilized,” Allison repeats dryly. “Compared to Legionnaires?” She eyes the spoonful of stew that Erica’s holding and shifts her arms to the limit of their restraints. “You can’t untie me and let me feed myself?”

Erica laughs in her face. “Scott says you took down Isaac at hand-to-hand combat. Not a chance.” She lifts the spoon and waits, and after another minute of staring and wriggling Allison opens her mouth and lets Erica feed her, scoop by scoop.

***

“Always the goddamn _Kahns_.” Lydia spits the name, pacing rings into the wooden plank flooring of the caravan headquarters as she does. “Lying, scheming, cheating, turncloak Kahns. I don’t know why we thought to trust them.” She looks to where Jackson and Danny are sitting in rickety plastic chairs off to the side, watching her wheel. “What odds would you take? Against Kahns?”

Brotherhood scout and Boomer share a glance, then a shrug.

“I’ve never fought a Great Kahn,” Danny says. “They didn’t come near Nellis. Can we bomb them?”

Lydia grits her teeth. “Not without killing Allison. And we need to keep that bomber of yours fueled for Cottonwood Cove.”

“Just tell them you’ll pay their ransom, but that they have to bring her up here.” Jackson already sounds bored of the whole discussion. “We’ll ambush them as they come or smuggle her away in the middle of the night. She lives and, you keep your money and resources. Done.”

Danny looks bewildered. “Why would they agree to that?”

“They’ll have some reason or another to do business around New Vegas,” Lydia says. “Bringing a captive along wouldn’t slow them down much. And for the price they’re asking, it’s almost fair.” She taps her fingertips against her chin. “It could work, if their party is small enough.”

Jackson raises his hands to the ceiling. “There’s your answer.”

“If they agree,” Lydia says. “If there are only a few of them. If she doesn’t die in the fighting or somewhere along the way. If you two don’t die.” She clicks her tongue. “I’ll tell them to bring her to the 188, and I’ll come with you. We’ve already waited too long on Cottonwood Cove. And if Scott and Isaac are in the crew who bring her, I’ll either talk to them, or shoot them both, preferably in the heart.”

***

When it’s Scott’s turn to sit watch over Argent, she spends the first three hours talking herself hoarse to try to make him untie her hands.

“When we gagged you, we figured it was for your own good,” he winds up telling her. “Who cut it off?”

She smiles. “Your pet Fiend there. Isaac.”

Scott blinks. “No he didn’t.”

“Yes, he did.” She coughs. “I didn’t even ask him to. Couldn’t, really, being gagged and all.”

Scott stares at her.

“Ask him,” she says. “And, by the way, had you considered what’s going to happen when nature comes calling? Because I can guarantee that you don’t want to be in a closed room with me after I shit my pants. You’ve smelled a fresh-dead corpse before, right?”

“Erica,” he says simply, and, “We’re trying not to make things any worse for you than we have to.”

Argent raises an eyebrow and directs a pointed glance over her shoulder at her wrists.

“Do you remember the time Isaac killed that trooper at Camp Golf? He was surrounded – there were ten of them and two of us. You had him pinned in under a minute.” Scott licks over his teeth. “We can’t trust you.”

“Funny,” Argent says. “To think there was a time when I thought I could trust _you_.”

“The Kahns need money. They took us knowing what the NCR would pay for us, so we owe them whatever we can give.” He fusses with the lid of his canteen, pulling it open and flicking it closed so he doesn’t have to look at her. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

“So you’re not Kahns, then.”

“No, we aren’t.” Scott swallows. “They’ve been very clear on that.”

Argent sighs and lets the conversation drop, closing her eyes. She’s still faking sleep when Boyd arrives to relieve Scott of his post.

***

“Did you cut Argent’s gag?” Scott asks when they walk out of the meal hall together.

Isaac keeps his head turned left to watch a sparring match on the canyon floor as they climb towards their tent. “Yes.”

Scott trips over an outcropping and scrambles to regain his balance while Isaac slows to wait for him. “Why?” he asks once he’s vertical again. “We could have fed her even with it on. She’s going to talk herself into a grave.”

Isaac shrugs. “It seemed like something you would do.”

“Cutting off a captive’s gag?”

“Letting somebody speak.”

This time, Scott trips on air while Isaac walks on, six feet of Fiend with an unlit Shishkebab and a gradually-developing moral compass.

***

Regis gives the order to Boyd first, who passes it on to Erica, and then Scott and Isaac: “We’re going to Boulder City and bringing Argent along. Martin’s meeting us at the 188 with the money.”

“You know what’s under the 188, right?” Scott asks.

“Gun Runners,” Erica says. She sounds bored. “It’s fine.”

“It’s a trap,” Scott says. “That deal went too smoothly. Martin still has connections to the Boomers and the Brotherhood. 188’s midway between them, and if Gun Runners are there too… no. Tell her no. She can go to Boulder City.”

“Anyone who can get to the 188 can get to Boulder City just as easily, and I’m not bringing hostiles onto our territory, or threatening her into feeling she needs excessive backup,” Boyd says. “We go to the 188, and Argent keeps her hands tied and a gag in her mouth unless me or Erica says otherwise. She’s a Kahn prisoner.” He stares down Isaac and waits.

Isaac lets the silence stretch into stiffness, then awkwardness, then insubordination, and then Scott prods him in the ribs and he grits out “Understood.”

They’re not Kahns. That is very, very well understood.

***

“This is the last shadow of privacy you’ll have for a while,” Erica warns her, even as she’s tugging Allison’s pants and underwear down around her ankles. “Keep that in mind.” She turns around.

Allison squats over the privy and keeps her gaze on the canyon wall in front of her, face burning with shame as it has every time she’s done this in the last three days, and remembers a barren road full of rusting, burned-out Pre-War cars – staring at that, day after day, until the heat boiled her brain into thinking that running a caravan might give her a better life – and wonders if Heaven will seem so glamorous in comparison.

***

Going from Red Rock Canyon to the 188 doesn’t seem like a long trip until you walk the distance with your hands tied behind you back and your company dragging you out of sight anytime they see someone else on the road or forging through the brush. The first and only time they take her gag off to feed her, she tries to argue Boyd into untying her hands so she can fight if they’re attacked by Powder Gangers or Fiends. He ignores her, and when they pass between Vault 19 and the South Vegas ruins and the hillsides around them light up with dynamite explosions, Allison spends the entire fight with Erica’s knee planted firmly in the middle of her back, listening to her pick off Powder Gangers with her trail carbine.

After that, Allison gives up on getting her hands back until the Kahns get their money, and tries to get used to choking down water and gruel. She walks quietly between Scott and Isaac while Erica ranges ahead on point and Boyd brings up the rear, sleeps curled up at night to preserve whatever body heat she can while her guards huddle in pairs, and chews on her gag to soften it when sleep takes its dear, sweet time in coming.

The second night, a patrol of giant ants tries to sneak up on them under a crescent moon, and she watches Isaac walk into the scrub with his blade held loose at his side while the others sleep on. The shrieks and squelches and squeals jolt everyone to wakefulness, and then Isaac reappears with slime coating his right arm up to the shoulder. He flops down beside the wispy remains of the fire and starts pulling the armor off of that arm, and Boyd and Erica go back to sleep while Scott comes to crouch beside Isaac.

If the two of them say anything, she doesn’t hear it, but Isaac locks eyes with her when he stands up again almost an hour later, arm guards cleaned and reattached to the conglomeration of leather and metal sheathing his body. He watches her for a few seconds while Scott watches him and she watches both of them, and then he grabs a blanket and tosses it over her before wrapping Scott’s around himself and lying down with his spine pressed to the line of Scott’s leg, head in Scott’s lap.

The next night, he has first watch, and Allison doesn’t bother with pretending to sleep. She plops down next to him on a small boulder next to their campsite, legs crossed, backs to the fire. The spiked plate on his shoulder just barely brushes her arm.

He does nothing for long enough that she considers the possibility of falling asleep sitting up, and she’s deep in thought, wondering if her lax back muscles would still be strong enough to keep her from falling and bashing her head open when she feels his fingers working at the side of her head, where her hair is still matted and bloody from getting hit by Erica’s brick.

The gag comes loose, and she lets it drop into her lap, then leans off to the side to spit into the dirt several times. Isaac makes no move to keep her from falling, should she come off-balance, but when she sits upright again he presses his canteen to her lips and lets her drink.

After she’s done, she licks around her mouth and spits again, then starts to unfold her legs to hop down. His voice – barely above a whisper – stops her.

“Remember Violet?”

She croaks a whisper back: “The Fiend leader?”

“Yeah.” He pulls out a dagger to toy with – one of hers, actually. She recognizes the ring on the end of the handle. “I kicked one of her dogs, once. She tied me up – ankles together, wrists, body – ” he straightens his legs and clasps his hands behind his back to demonstrate. “Tied me to a support beam from a ruined building and left me there. Gagged.” He plucks the cloth strip from her lap and tucks it into a pocket. “Took three days to get my hands free to take off the gag. Used bits of broken glass and stone to saw through the rest.” He pulls off the gloves he’s wearing, and she sees rings around his wrists and disordered slices across his palms. “Wasn’t the first time I got tied up,” Allison hears him say, “but it was the last.”

“Congratulations on your empathy.” She flexes her hands into fists and listens to the knuckles pop. “Thanks for taking that off.” She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them.

Isaac slides out his Shishkebab and lays it diagonally across his lap, point towards Allison, and starts sharpening it with grating pulls of a whetstone. She watches his fingers tick carefully over nicks in the metal, and then he murmurs “You could probably fall off of here without waking anyone up.”

“Off this rock?”

Isaac nods.

Allison blinks at him a couple times before he gives her hands a pointed look and asks how flexible her shoulders are.

“Pretty – oh.” She pauses. “I don’t understand you. I understand your point, but _you_ …?”

He returns his attention to the Shishkebab. “Just don’t let Boyd or Erica see you.”

“Trust me, I won’t.” She rocks her weight forwards into a crouch as Isaac sets his sword off to the side, and with a couple mumbled curses and a lot of complaining from her poor, abused shoulders, steps backwards through the circle of her arms. “Oh god.” She sits back and pulls her bound hands up to her chest, letting her eyes flutter shut. “Oh my god that feels so much better.”

Isaac picks up the Shishkebab again. “Scott has the next watch. You’ve got two hours before you need to get them behind your back again.”

She nods wearily at him, suddenly drained, and slips down off the boulder to curl on the ground next to it, the front of her shoulders aching with release.

***

It hurts to twist her arms up behind her back before Erica’s watch, but it’s better than a broken wrist or whatever else the Kahns might do to her otherwise. Scott touches her shoulder to wake her at the end of his watch, and then helps steady her when she wobbles off-balance with one foot through. He ties the gag again for her, too, a little looser than before.

Allison’s in the first hazy stages of sleep when Boyd climbs to his feet, buckles on his machete and hunting rifle, and walks out of the campsite. She’s still awake – eyes closed, feigning sleep –  when he comes back twenty or thirty minutes later, but he sacks out again and nothing happens, so she lets herself drift off and doesn’t wake up again until morning.

***

The land around the REPCONN headquarters is deserted except for ant mounds and a ruined town patrolled by Fiends that they have to skirt around. They spend about five seconds on Highway 95 before Boyd and Erica decide that it’s too well-traveled and take them back into the scrub.

On the fourth night of their journey they camp a few dozen yards from the bank of a fetid, radioactive pond that sets their rad counters ticking when they get any closer. The 188 is just over the rim of the horizon – less than an inch on most maps of the area. Scott has first watch and Isaac last, so Allison gets to spend the night with no gag and her hands in front of her, tucked against a rock shelf, Scott and Isaac’s bodies shielding her from the Kahns’ view when they take their watches. She’d have to step over them to get anywhere, of course. Everyone’s moves are getting more calculated.

When Isaac sleeps, he does so with a dagger in his hand.

***

Scott wakes up to Boyd poking at a couple of sizzling Brahmin steaks with a stripped branch. He yawns, sits up, and looks around, taking stock. Isaac’s lounging on top of the rock shelf, staring across the waste; Argent’s sitting at the base of it, hands behind her back and gag in her mouth, pretending to blink sleep from her eyes; Erica is just kicking off her blankets and stretching into wakefulness.

The steaks are good, if a little tough, and the sky is bright, fairly clear of dust. Dropping Argent and collecting her ransom won’t take much time, and they’ll move faster afterwards – they could be in Boulder City by nightfall. Scott stretches, joints in his shoulders and back popping, and ambles towards the fire pit.

The first shot out of the wastes comes from behind him, grazing a burn across the outside of his thigh. He drops to one knee, grabbing for his rifle while Boyd and Erica leap to their feet and Isaac bounds off the rock shelf, Shishkebab in hand.

The second shot is at an obtuse angle from the first, pinging off the rock a few inches from Argent’s head as she balls herself into a smaller target. Scott takes a step towards her and watches Isaac slip the tip of his Shishkebab between the ribs of a stranger wrapped in leather armor. When Isaac yanks the blade free in a wash of blood, a pink and glistening loop of intestine tries to follow it, spurting liquid between the stranger’s fingers when they clasp them over the hole, dropping the revolver they had carried. Isaac lunges again, and two and a half feet of reinforced steel explode through the stranger’s spinal column, bits of bone and marrow caught in the jags of the metal.

More shots go off as Scott feels the ground go out from under him due to a blunt-force impact at the base of his neck, and he blinks and refocuses just in time to feel a steel-tipped boot collide with his skull. The world acquires a fuzzy overtone, but he can still recognize the yellow tangle of Erica’s hair.

***

A bullet whizzes by Erica’s ear, and she shoots an annoyed glance over her shoulder at the bounty hunter with the bad aim hiding in the bushes. Another hunter – a brown-skinned woman with half a dozen guns of varying size strapped to her waist and thighs – rises up in front of Erica and plucks a hunting revolver from her belt, leveling its sights on Isaac at the same time as Boyd charges with his machete.

Isaac gets the flat of his blade up in front of his face in time to block Boyd’s swing, but then Erica has to look away because Scott McCall the Cement-Skulled is staggering to his feet. He has all the grace of a drunken Brahmin as he reels to the left, but when he drops to his knees again and sights his rifle between Boyd’s shoulder blades, the hand gripping the barrel locks into steadiness.

Erica lunges for Scott. He pulls the trigger.

***

Allison takes her time working her hands up in front of her again. The campsite is a mess of metal and gunpowder, and no one seems to be paying very much attention to the woman huddled by the rock shelf, but a stray shot could kill her at any moment. So she moves carefully, bringing her hands up and then dropping onto her stomach, scanning the ground for something to cut her bonds with. Erica is on top of Scott, grappling with him, a long knife in her hand, but she isn’t doing anything more than menacing him with it. When Allison looks towards Boyd and Isaac, she sees the opposite: they’re arm’s-length apart, both with blades in hand, driving at one another with intent to kill. Back and forth across a sparse few feet of ground they go, blood dripping into the sand from Boyd’s shoulder and Isaac’s thigh, churning into the dirt.

Isaac blocks a strike one-handed with his Shishkebab and drops the other to his hip to grab Allison’s dagger and bring it around, and then one of the shooters around them fires a shot that plunges into the tricep supporting the Shishkebab and Isaac collapses into a pile of flying metal and human limbs to stay out of Boyd’s range.

Allison’s dagger goes skidding across the dirt. She looks around – Erica is standing over Scott with a fist-sized rock held high, Isaac scrabbling away from Boyd as he tries to find his feet – and drops onto her stomach, trench-crawling on her elbows towards the dagger.

Boyd yells something, and there are suddenly three times as many people in the campsite: men and women in a myriad assortment of armor, all with firearms in their hands. A trio of them step over to Scott’s inert body while the others help Boyd encircle Isaac, who is half-leaning on his Shishkebab for support as he gets himself upright again, the tip of the blade buried in the dirt. Allison grabs the dagger and tucks it between her wrists, letting the force of her weight start to slice through the rope.

“Some fucking help you were,” Erica says. “We should just kill you and keep the bounties for ourselves.”

“Good luck with this one, then,” says one of the women, jerking her revolver at Isaac. “He wasn’t going down easy. Or McCall over there.”

“He’s awake,” the man standing over Scott says. Scott is, indeed, blinking and gradually working out how to sit up. “Should I drop him again?”

Boyd gives the bounty hunter a sharp look. “We need him alive, or else no one gets paid.”

“And the Fiend?”

Erica starts to stalk towards Isaac. “I had wondered if Stilinski would pay more for the chance to cut his throat in person, but…”

“The bounty calls for his head.”

“Indeed.” She stops just in front of Allison. “Maybe-”

The decision takes half a second – the action barely more than that. Allison stops trying to cut through her bonds and grabs the dagger in both hands, rearing up on her knees and plunging the point through the back of Erica’s thigh. Erica screams, and then Allison hears a high-pitched whistle from the air and lifts her own voice to cover it, because she knows exactly what it means.

The shallow pit they dug for their fire explodes into a storm of splinters and dust. Through it, she hears a commotion of singing steel and gunshots, and then a second mortar lands off the edge of the campsite and someone is stepping on Allison’s ankle as they run. She curls in to shield her head.

“Boyd,” she hears. “Boyd, _go_.”

There is a grunt and a scrape nearby, then heavily-burdened footsteps, and the third mortar strikes behind her, amongst the running bounty hunters.

Allison lies still and holds her breath while waves of dust sweep over her.

***

Jackson insists on being the first in line as they circumnavigate the radioactive pond, and Lydia lets him because she knows how insignificant he feels, standing there in his pretty, gleaming power armor while Danny dispersed Kahns and bounty hunters alike in a matter of seconds. But once she sees the inert figure with Allison’s armor and Allison’s hair curled up amidst the bodies and rubble, she pushes ahead of him, bounding through the last of the bushes.

“Allison? _Allison_?”

Allison’s head snaps up, and she twists around at the sound of Lydia’s voice. A knotted cloth wraps around her head, and her hands are bound in front of her by fraying ropes. Her eyes, though, are smiling.

“Oh thank god.” Lydia goes to her knees in front of her and pulls off the gag, then grabs her knife. “Are you alright? Still got hands? Legs? How bad is the Stockholm Syndrome?”

“Manageable.” Allison smiles while Lydia saws through her bonds, and waits for her to tuck the knife away before hugging her with arms that tremble. “I haven’t been able to do this for the last week and a half,” she says. “I can’t tell if it hurts more than it feels good.”

Lydia widens her knees to keep her balance and hugs Allison back, pressing her face into her blood-matted and dirty hair. “You look like everything should hurt.”

“Most of it doesn’t,” Allison reassures her, and then pulls back to examine her wrists. The skin has been rubbed raw and there are a few patches of broken skin, but they aren’t drenched in blood or permanently scarred. “Better than expected from a kidnapping, overall, actually.” She blinks over Lydia’s shoulder at Danny. “I could kiss you on the mouth for your timing with that mortar.”

“Missile launcher,” he corrects, smiling. “And that is just fine.” Lydia steps aside so he can tug Allison to her feet and into a gentle hug. In her peripheral vision Jackson is walking across the remains of the campsite.

She counts two bodies around the fire pit, a third with entrails spilling from his belly, three more under the blast of the second missile, and saw a seventh corpse as they were walking into the campsite. All are unfamiliar and armed to the teeth – the two Kahns must have escaped the direct force of the blasts. On the far side of the site are two faces she does recognize: Scott McCall and his pet Fiend. Isaac is barely sitting up, and he has Scott’s face cupped in both hands, Scott’s thumbs rubbing small circles into Isaac’s wrists.

“Jackson.”

His helmet turns to face her.

“You have a Stimpak?”

He nods.

She makes a ‘give it’ twitch with two fingers, and he tosses it to her. She nods over her shoulder at Allison. “Make sure she stays alive and in one piece.”

Jackson nods again and ambles past her, setting the bulk of his power armor between Allison and her kidnappers.

Lydia tosses the Stimpak into the air, catches it, and stalks across the campsite.

***

Isaac is shaking under Scott’s hands, little gasps choking out of his throat. Blood is bubbling out of his thigh and slicking the right side of his ribcage, dribbling down his face from slices on his cheekbone and temple. He tips his forehead against Scott’s, eyes closed, shuddering as he breathes.

Scott’s skull feels swollen and fit to bust at the fused seams of the bones. He feels Isaac shudder harder, and turns his head to kiss the heel of Isaac’s palm. He knows it’s bad when Isaac sighs instead of recoiling.

“Logically, I should shoot both of you.”

Isaac’s huff ghosts across Scott’s mouth, and Scott closes his eyes.

“You went renegade on the NCR, first of all, and joined the Kahns, who are a known group of caravan-ravagers. And then you kidnapped my co-owner and tried to ransom her back to me, as if you didn’t expect me to bring a Boomer to get her back. So maybe I should just leave you two wandering the wastes, since you’re bound to get yourselves killed soon, with plans like that. And if I turn in Isaac’s body, I end a few thousand caps richer.”

“Don’t touch him,” Scott says.

The cover of a Stimpak’s needle clicks as Martin pulls it off. She crouches down next to them. “You once helped see a caravan of weapons vital to the Legion defeat from the Mojave Outpost to Camp McCarran,” she says, and it takes a moment to realize she’s addressing Isaac. “The bounty for your death is chump change against a Mojave _not_ controlled by dictatorial rapists and murderers. If I wanted to hurt you or kill you, I would have done it from half a mile away with a missile launcher.”

Isaac licks his lips, then lets go of Scott’s neck with one hand. Lydia pulls the protective plate off his forearm and slides the needle home in a single smooth motion. In another moment, the tremors wracking Isaac’s body begin to subside as the wounds in his thigh and torso seal themselves.

“Thank you,” Scott says, and she backhands him hard enough to knock him on his ass.

Isaac hisses, but it’s Danny the Boomer who speaks next: “Even discounting the concussive force from the missile strikes, he’s been hit on the head three times in the last forty minutes. You’re going to have to redirect your abuse if you want him alive.”

“Understood.” Martin stabs a finger at Scott. “But if you do turn on me again, McCall, I will shoot you in the face, and I won’t be handing out Stimpaks afterwards.”

Scott raises a wobbly hand to his cheek. “Gotcha.”

“Good. Now let’s move, if you can walk. We can talk business later.”

***

They relocate to a shell-blasted circle of cars a stone’s throw from the 188, and even though it’s the middle of the day they make preparations to spend the night there. After ten days of being bound and trekked across the waste and multiple weeks of tracking Scott and Isaac beforehand, Allison is exhausted physically and mentally, and her quarries/captors aren’t much better. While Jackson is sent to bargain at the trading post, Allison finds the softest patch of gritty dirt and passes out with her head in Lydia’s lap while Scott does the same with Isaac. Danny keeps one eye on Isaac at all times, but Isaac keeps his hands visible and his gaze trained on the sky, and if he’s having a covert conversation with Scott through the designs that he traces with fingertips on his shoulders and back, neither of them does anything about it.

Danny’s other eye keeps a lookout for Kahns or more bounty hunters, but they don’t turn up either.

***

“So,” Lydia says over roasted lizards. “I hope you two don’t mind joining us for a short detour to the south.”

Isaac looks at Scott. Scott looks at Isaac, then back at Lydia. “What’s in the south?”

“Cottonwood Cove.”

Scott blinks.

Lydia sighs. “When the Boomers bombed the Fort and killed Gerard, they cut the head off of the snake that is the Legion. Unfortunately, this particular snake is still thousands of brainwashed soldiers strong, with individual centurions banding together to reconvene their power. They’re already filtering back into the Mojave through landings at Cottonwood Cove. With the NCR largely withdrawn from the area, there’s no standing army to stop them.”

“So what are the six of us going to do?”

Isaac glances over at the short string of pack Brahmin that Jackson brought back from the 188 earlier this afternoon. “Blow up the town.” He looks back at Lydia. “Or the docks, anyway.”

Allison answers him: “The docks and harbor area are our main target. We have the Boomers up at Nellis – ” she nods at Danny “- working on a warhead that can be dropped on the town and make landing impossible, or at least highly radioactive. That’s months away at the earliest. In the meantime, we’re going to slow the Legion down, even if we can’t stop them.”

“Who gave you the explosives?” Scott asks. “Stiles?”

“Stiles can’t stand up straight without a cane,” Lydia says. “He’s bedridden for the most part, and his father isn’t giving him anything that resembles bad news. He barely acknowledges that things in the Mojave didn’t suddenly become perfect with Gerard’s death.” She smiles grimly. “The Gun Runners, on the other hand, are very aware of the situation, and they don’t like losing merchandise to the Legion raids any more than the rest of us. The bombs come courtesy of them and the Van Graffs, and they sent a few of their fighters down the road ahead of us to clear the town of any Legionnaires that are already there. Everyone agrees that the fewer guards the explosives have, the less attention they’ll draw, which is where you two come in.”

“As guards?”

“As guards,” Lydia confirms. “Ideally, we’d have a few Kahns as scouts and screens, but…” she lifts her palms to the sky in a gesture of resignation. “You can’t have everything all the time.”

Scott plucks a bone off his plate to fuss with. “So that’s why you were looking for us?” He pauses. “Why you were _really_ looking for us?”

“The Legion is still wealthy and powerful,” Allison says. “They infiltrated the Kahns once and could have done it again for all we knew. Better to be seen as buying protection for a caravan than as plotting an attack that could delay their westward push indefinitely if it works.” She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. There are still raw marks ringing her wrists.

“And you’re choosing to trust us?”

Jackson’s laugh echoes off the husks of cars around them. “The Legion already hates you; NCR hates your pet Fiend – _ex-_ Fiend there; the Fiends hate both of you; the Power Gangers hate you; the Kahns betrayed you; if you don’t help us the Brotherhood and Boomers will both hate you; if you do help us, you may, _may_ curry enough good favor with enough people to make it up to Freeside to see your mother again someday.”

Scott goes still.

“I spoke to her when I was looking for you.” Allison’s voice is soft. “She’s fine, but she’s worried about you.”

Scott blinks several times and tucks his chin into his chest. Isaac shifts closer, pressing their shoulders together. “We’ll help you,” he says, resting his knuckles against Scott’s thigh.

Scott swallows and nods, eyes still on the ground. “Yeah. Yeah. We’ll help.”

***

“I think that was what they call ‘emotional manipulation’,” Isaac whispers.

“I know it was,” Scott whispers back. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help. It’s not like we have a ton of options.”

Isaac sighs and curls his arm tighter around Scott’s waist, breath warm against his ear. “Probably won’t survive this trip. Not both of us.”

Scott grips at Isaac’s arm with both hands. “Yes we will.” He says it too loudly, and Danny, who is sitting watch, flicks a pebble at them.

Isaac fits his face into the space between Scott’s shoulder blades and goes quiet, fingers splayed wide over the curve of Scott’s hip, both of them listening to the other breathe, feeling it, holding tight.

***

There are a lot of raided caravans littered along Highway 95 between the 188 and Novac. They have their first fight practically on top of a Brahmin’s savaged carcass: Viper raiders outfitted with a collection of 10mm weapons and scrappy armor, plus one with a grenade rifle. Jackson forges into their midst with  bullets pinging off his armor and vaporizes half of them with lasers while Lydia and Scott tag-team to shoot the one with the grenade launcher into cheese, and Isaac goes about systematically hacking the rest of them to shreds until his Shishkebab gets caught in a woman’s ribcage. By that point, though, the two surviving Vipers have seen the grenade rifle that Danny is casually wiping off after prying it from their leader’s cooling grip, and they run.

Isaac plants his foot on the Viper’s pelvis and heaves, and the Shishkebab slides free with an airy snapping of ribs. He looks up at Danny as he ambles over. “That’ll be two voices running to tell the world about us, now.”

“No they won’t.” Danny smirks. “Give her a sec.”

A _crack_ rolls over the waste. One of the running Vipers crumples into a heap. The other glances back and stumbles, then rolls to his feet and double-times it up the hill. He reaches the crest; another _crack_ sounds and he drops.

Allison lowers the sights of her rifle and ejects the second shell casing.

“We’re fine.” He goes to pat Isaac’s shoulder, then thinks better of it. “Did-”

“Let’s go, boys; we’ve got a long trek to Cottonwood Cove. Jackson, stop posing and get back with the Brahmin.”

The grin that spreads across Isaac’s face is the first that Danny has seen on him: wide, rollicking, and smitten with bloodlust, it is a terrifying sight.

***

They’re camped in the shadow of Novac’s green dinosaur of a watchtower before Isaac detaches himself from Scott’s side long enough for Allison to have a private conversation (if you can call it that) with him.

“I’m never going to understand how you fell into bed with a Fiend,” she says between prodding the gecko steaks they have roasting over the fire. “Aren’t you a little past the warm body excuse at this point?”

Scott shuffles his weight onto his knees. “What do you care?”

“You were a pretty straight-laced guy, once upon a time. Until that bit with the squad leader at Golf, anyone with half a brain would have said that you’d stick with Stiles until the end of the earth. Suddenly you’re running with a Fiend in the Kahns. What happened?”

“Stiles is like my brother,” Scott says. “He always has been and always will be. He’s just a brother I don’t agree with all the time anymore.”

“You think you could have managed better against Peter Hale?”

Scott rubs at his face with his hands. “No, that’s not what I – I don’t know. I probably couldn’t have. That wasn’t what I meant. I just… most people start out the same, probably, don’t you think? We’re all kids who run around and eat dirt and bang our heads into walls just to see what happens. I was like that, Stiles was like that, you were probably like that… Lydia was probably, I don’t know, monopolizing the local trade in toy cars and stuffed animals or something, but she was a snotty little kid once. Isaac, too. And it’s one thing, I think, to be a Fiend and rape and maim and kill because you think it’s fun-”

“Have you ever watched the man fight? He thinks killing is the best fun there is.”

Scott chews on his bottom lip and pokes at the gruel they have stewing. “But-”

She interrupts again: “You think everyone in the Legion deserves some love too? Anyone who’s left a village burning, people dying on crosses – you think all those men with three dozen bastards born of rape should have someone defending them against-”

“Isaac never raped anyone,” Scott states with such certainty that Allison stops in her tracks. “He says he hasn’t, and I believe him. And he – he fights to kill, because someone always comes at him first. He wouldn’t cut someone’s arm off and walk away. He kills completely, like he – ” Scott gestures helplessly, gaze flitting around the campsite to where Isaac is sitting atop the chain-link fence that encircles the motel, head craned back to stare up at the rifle poking from the mouth of Dinky the dinosaur. “Do you know the story of how we found him?”

She turns the spit, frowning. “Pulled him out of the Thorn, didn’t you?”

“Sort of.” Scott clears his throat. “They put him up against a Deathclaw. And, you know, you can kill a Deathclaw with a sniper, anti-material rifle, maybe a light machine gun, a missile launcher – not with a sword. He wound up in my mom’s sick bay at the Followers’ camp, ribcage clawed apart, getting pumped full of chems, and we – I talked him into coming with us instead of going back.”

“Just like that.”

“We talked to a bunch of people around town first. Freeside, Westside, NCR settlers who gambled at the Thorn – they all said the same thing. Quiet guy, keeps to himself, never hits first in a fight, always wins. It was always someone with a problem coming after him.”

“Because he’s a Fiend.”

“Probably, yeah.”

She snorts. “Has it ever occurred to you that he’d fit in _quite_ well with the Legion?”

Scott shakes his head. “He’d be dead in a week.”

“I don’t think so.”

“They don’t let you have chems in the Legion. Under his armor?” Scott waves an arm to indicate his torso. “All scars. Blades and claws and stingers and bullets – you’ve seen his hands, haven’t you? Practically every fight he’s ever been in, he’s had something artificial to patch him up afterwards. That’s why he fights so… so viciously. It’s like he doesn’t even recognize that he could die, or that something might not heal. I keep waiting for the day when Stimpaks and Med-X stop working on him because he’s so broken, there’s so much scar tissue. He’d never last.”

“He’d take down a lot of people before dying,” Allison says. “But you still haven’t explain why you stuck with him.”

Scott puffs up his cheeks, then blows the air out slowly. “He, sometimes – sometimes I can see this guy who is more than an ex-Fiend who’s really good at killing things with a sword. He _was_ a kid once, you know. And maybe he was like you and me and Stiles, or maybe he wasn’t, but he got broken really badly somehow, and I feel like the Fiends were just a really shitty decision that made sense to him because chems put certain things behind a wall and made him, you know, stronger, faster, bloodthirsty, helped keep him alive. But he’s… there was a time when he rarely spoke a complete sentence to anyone. The guy who walked out of the Follower’s medical tent with us would never have cut off a captive’s gag for no good reason. He’s getting… getting back some of the humanity that he lost between the Fiends and the chems and whatever went down before he joined them. And I-”

“Think you’re somehow going to heal him with the power of human love?”

Scott meets her eyes and shrugs, face serious. “If that’s what it is, it’s working.”

“Slowly. Is it worth everything you two have gone through?”

A guilty expression crosses Scott’s face. “I hope so.” He rubs at his mouth. “I’m mainly just trying to live up to, trying to be the person that he thinks I am.” His head turns, and Allison sees Isaac slipping off the fence to prowl over to them. “Hey.”

Isaac folds himself onto the ground with some creaking of armor and popping of joints. “That sniper’s facing the wrong way. There are more Vipers coming from the south.”

“Shit.” Allison jumps to her feet, grabbing for her rifle. When she climbs the fence she can see a handful of pale faces bobbing in the dark as they rush the town. “Lyds?”

She’s already halfway up the fence. “Shoot one of them. See what happens.”

Allison does. The kick almost knocks her off the fence, but Lydia and Danny each throw out an arm to catch her before she cracks her skull on the pavement. When she resituates herself, she casts a glance up at Dinky’s mouth, where the sniper’s rifle has swiveled around to point south. The Vipers are still coming – more of them than she thought; those with darker skin are invisible except as fuzzy patches of movement. “Crap.”

“Jackson are you – you don’t have your armor; you’re useless up close. Grab your laser rifle and get up here. And give Danny that grenade launcher.”

“Ma’am yes ma’am,” Jackson mumbles. He scales the fence on Lydia’s other side, hooking his arms over the top instead of climbing all the way up. Scott’s next to him, partially straddling the fence, feet hooked into the gaps in the wire.

Allison fires a shot that misses a Viper’s heart and only grazes her shoulder instead. She curses and reloads. “Where’s Isaac?”

The fence rattles when he slams into it, hauls himself over the top, and then launches himself across the road to hit the dirt and roll on the other side. He rises into a crouch and slinks out of sight around a car.

“He’s dead,” Jackson says mildly, taking aim with his laser and missing by a mile.

Allison shoots, reloads, and shoots again with a steady hand, breathing in a forced rhythm of control while she keeps her eyes trained on the closest target, squinting against the glare of sunset. There are somewhere between two and three dozen Vipers ducking behind bushes and rubble and rusted shells of cars – too much cover.

Lydia jumps off the fence, into the motel’s parking lot. “Keep shooting,” she orders, and beelines towards the packs with all their belongings. “McCalll – with me.”

Scott leaps backwards off the fence, out of Allison’s view.

***

Lydia drops the case with her machine gun components next to the motel gate. “Shoot any of them that come this way,” she orders, then drops to her knees and starts pulling pieces from the bag. She hears Scott’s rifle discharge several times in the time it takes her to slam the twenty-pound contraption together and heft it onto her shoulder, aiming for a knot of Vipers being torn apart by Isaac. “Tell him-”

“ _Fiend_ ,” Scott bellows, and Isaac disappears from sight.

Lydia opens fire.

***

A Viper corpse in front of Allison twitches and jerks as she approaches, several of its limbs caught under other bodies in a compound puzzle of dead weight. She flips her rifle over her back and grabs a booted foot, leaning her weight against it until a well-placed shove from underneath lets her haul it clear of the pile. The first thing Isaac does after sitting up is spit off to one side. The stench of death-loosened bowels reeks up to the highest reaches of heaven.

“You alright?” Allison asks, extending a hand.

Isaac blinks at her. Blood is soaked into his curls and dribbling from a cut along his jaw, patches of his armor slick and crusty with it by turns. His grip is vise-tight when he grabs her hand, but he lets go as soon as she’s vertical, though he stumbles when one of the corpses he’s standing on slips sideways.

“Oh thank god.” Scott moves towards them like he’s drawn by a lodestone. “Isaac-”

Isaac steps over a gangly, jaundiced Viper with dark skin and red hair who died trying to hold the air inside his lungs after Lydia’s machine gun tore them to shreds, spreads his hand across the center of Scott’s chest, just below his collarbone, and shoves him into the driver’s-side door of a Pre-War pickup truck. He keeps moving: fitting one thigh into the space between Scott’s legs, digging the fingers of one hand into Scott’s waist and the others into his hair, levering Scott’s mouth open with a twist of his lips and a scrape of his teeth.

And Scott – Scott goes pliant and loose, loops his arms around Isaac’s neck and lets him run the show for which Allison has a front-row seat.

When Scott lolls his head to one side and Isaac rakes his teeth over the exposed skin, their eyes both catch on her, and Scott freezes. Isaac gives her the barest moment of consideration, then goes back to unbuckling Scott’s belt one-handed. The sliver of his grin is moon-white.

Allison manages a shaky inhale, looks around the night-darkened battlefield and sees none of it, then slowly sinks to one knee, leaning on her rifle for support. She presses her temple to the cool metal of the barrel and forgets to blink.

***

Lydia pulls the crew together at dawn after a night spent doing almost everything but sleeping. “I want to make a few points,” she tells them. “First of all: that was not a randomly-timed attack.” She upends a small sack of Legion denarii onto the ground in the middle of their circle. There are hundreds of the coins, a total value of more than a thousand caps paid to a group of incompetent raiders who could have, at best, killed no more than one or two of the bomb crew.

“The Legion knows we’re coming,” Danny says. “Alright. Can we ask for more guards?”

 Lydia shakes her head. “Not unless you can talk some of your technicians into building a teleportation pad, and some of your soldiers into making the trip. The Gun Runners and Van Graffs have already sent what they can as our screen and to clear the Legion from Cottonwood Cove, and we have limited time until the next wave of boats arrives.” She shoves the coins to one side with her foot, then steps into the center of the circle. “To be blunt, everyone here is expendable except for Danny and Allison, because you two are the only ones capable of setting off the bombs. So the next time we fight – and we will see more fights – I want it clear that you two are to be kept out of danger. I don’t care if that means Jackson puts on his power armor and spends the whole time standing between you and any enemies with guns. And, Allison: no hand-to-hand combat. Stick with the sniper rifle. Clear?”

Allison smiles. “I can do that.”

Jackson shrugs. “Whatever.”

Scott looks at Isaac; Isaac twitches one eyebrow and flicks his gaze towards Allison, then shrugs. Scott looks back at Lydia. “Fine.”

Danny kneels in the dirt and scoops up a handful of coins, studying Gerard’s profile. “How many days until we reach Cottonwood Cove?”

“At least four.”

He nods. “Four days.” Looking up at Allison, he grins. “Think we can live that long?”

“You will,” Lydia says. “Or else we might as well sign ourselves over to the Legion right now.”

Behind her, Scott shifts his weight from foot to foot and Isaac takes a deep, steadying breath, armor creaking as he folds his arms across his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Consider this a poll: how do we feel about triad relationships? Drop me a comment and let me know.


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